record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00666
Thesis Title
The artist as strategist - Topography in plastic creation in Paris at the beginning of the 21st century
Author
Julio Velasco
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
PhD
Year
2017
Number of Pages
505
University
Université de Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne
Thesis Supervisor
Olga Kisseleva
Supervisor e-mail
olga.kisseleva AT gmail.com
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
French
Department / Discipline
Art and Art Sciences
Copyright Ownership
Julio Velasco
Languages Familiar to Author
French, Spanish, English, Italien, German
URL where full thesis can be found
Edition in process
Keywords
Art and strategy, Art districts, Art and territory, Berlin, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, New York, Paris, Artist in the Faubourg St. Denis, Nathalie Heinich, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Philippe Antoine, Thomas Hirschhorn, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Pierre Huyghe, Olga Ki
Abstract: 200-500 words
The subject of this thesis concerns the relationship between territoriality and strategy in contemporary art. It studies, from groupings generally defined as "artist districts" or "art districts", the causes and the consequences of these gatherings for artistic creation. This question is usually approached through the modifications that these art gatherings generate for their neighbourhood (gentrification, population changes, tourist attraction, control by the official power of an escheated area, etc.), but there is much less interest in the causes and consequences that this territorial groups have for the artistic production itself. The originality of this work comes from its approach to these places fundamentally in terms of their relationship with the art itself and the transformations it promotes within plastic creation. This doctoral work is essentially and structurally a transdisciplinary investigation, which brings together analyses in Aesthetics, Art and Art Sciences, History of Art, Sociology of Art and Urban Geography. The starting point and the backbone of this work is the district of Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris - we will specify below, the characteristics of this place that explain this choice. The different sections of the thesis This research is composed of four sections. The first one, rather short, specifies in three chapters the terms of the research. It begins with the meaning that the word "strategy" commonly bears in the artistic context, comparing it with those that it has in other contexts, especially in the field of science and in some sociological writings. Then, a chapter is devoted to the definition of the three types of "art districts" that we have established according to their use: creative districts (workshops), exhibition districts (galleries, museums, etc.) and neighbourhoods. This last category is rarely treated and its usefulness does not seem obvious, but it is precisely because of this apparent uselessness that our work focuses mainly on it (the Faubourg Saint-Denis is classified under this category). The third chapter approaches the issue of "people of art" and defines them as the group that creates, conceptually and not materially, the Artwork (it is also this group that we find at Faubourg Saint-Denis). The second section, which is, together with the next, the densest in our work, examines six contemporary art territories, in addition to a historical chapter that summarizes the evolution of these types of places since the Middle Ages. These six territories are: the district of Faubourg Saint-Denis (Paris), the district of Macarena (Bogota), the district of San Telmo (Buenos Aires), the district of Belleville (Paris), the district of Red Hook (New York) and, finally, the city of Berlin with a focus on the district of Neuköll. Finally, we propose a broad synthesis where we establish the conclusions and hypotheses that emerge from the study of these places. In the third part we analyse, individually, the plastic or theoretical creations of seven personalities working in the field of contemporary art who have lived in the Faubourg Saint-Denis since the year 2000: Nathalie Heinich, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Philipe Antoine, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ester Shalev-Gerz, Pierre Huyghe and Olga Kisseleva. Subsequently, as in the previous section, we compare this grouo to evaluate whether elements of a collective strategy emerge from these individual cases, which ones, and how they relate to each other. In the fourth section (rather short), we link this theoretical research with our personal plastic work and make a strategy proposal from all the previous elements. Finally, in the overall conclusion we summarize the various elements studied and highlight a series of hypotheses that emerge. The Faubourg Saint-Denis The Faubourg Saint-Denis, the backbone of our survey, is a relatively small area (between 500 and 900 m²) with a high population density, with very diverse origins. This multiplicity constitutes a historical constant of this place; nevertheless, much more than a place of residence, this perimeter constitutes a place of trade for most of these groups, which comes, for the most part, from what is commonly called the Third World. The district thus constitutes a space as well as a statement of identity and exchange, for which the presence of several train stations and the proximity of the centre of Paris play a determining role. Beside these groups, we meet a set of people working with contemporary art. Numerically, the group is not very important compared to the other populations of the district, but it constitutes nevertheless the strongest gathering of this type in Paris. However, the main importance of this group is not quantitative, but qualitative. Indeed, the group brings together three particular and fundamental characteristics: First, we find all the activities that participate in the construction of the artwork as a concept (the artists, of course, but also art theoreticians, critics, specialized journalists, curators, art centre and gallery directors, etc.); then these personalities occupy places of first order and enjoy a strong recognition in the field of art. And, finally, the vast majority of them are interested in the most innovative forms of contemporary art. In addition, the group has, overall, a series of common features, such as age or geographical origins, because its members come from so-called industrialized or developed countries. These origins contrast with those of other populations present in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, and unlike these other groups, these art-related personalities reside in the neighbourhood. We publish a non-exhaustive list of more than sixty names of personalities regarded as first-rate in contemporary art which have lived in a recent period in this perimeter. Nevertheless, it should be noted that, until recently, this district was not identified as an important place for art. Likewise, there is no institutional voluntarism at the origin of this gathering. Methodology The subject we have chosen involves a transdisciplinary investigation. It is a deliberate choice, because our research is being developed within the laboratory of Art and Sciences of Paris 1. One of its objectives is precisely to bring together the works and the working methods of art and sciences. The methodology is therefore, in itself, an essential element of this research. The Faubourg Saint-Denis of Paris presents a particularly rich ground for our investigation; however, in order to understand how it works, research has had to extend beyond the boundaries of this neighbourhood. In this way, comparisons between neighbourhoods or between individual strategies are central to our work. These comparisons provided us with a very large mass of sources that we classified into four groups: plastic works, writings (bibliography), interviews (about fifty in all, especially with the art personalities living in the studied neighbourhoods, but also with other people from the districts) and, finally, our own observations. The diversity of these references highlighted the inadequacies of quantitative analyses in the field of art: from quantitative data, for example, the district of Montmartre disappeared from maps for the period of its artistic apogee(1880-1920). Conversely, these same sources pointed out the risks involved in qualitative research. Thus, in our survey, we limited ourselves to six contemporary art districts, to a global historical study and to the analysis of the strategies of seven personalities of the district, which remains very insufficient compared to the whole. We therefore take these limitations into account and wish to emphasize on them. Our investigation is therefore a starting point and its conclusions are not definitive, but significant. Conclusions These conclusions are presented at the finish of the various sections (in particular the second and the third) and summarized at the end of the thesis. Here we present the ones that we think are probably the most interesting: - The art districts seem to serve (often in an unintentional and non-explicit way) artistic identifications. That means that people working on close art forms gather in the same type of territory. This fact allows us to make of these places an instrument of identification of the different groups working in the art and to speak of plastic "scenes". Within these groups, the one we called "people of art" (which corresponds to the art people who resides in the Faubourg Saint-Denis of Paris) seems to develop a particular strategy. This strategy coincides with the one used by the dominant group in the field of art, according to the definition of Pierre Bourdieu. The individual strategies we have studied in this group are far from homogeneous in their means and goals. This last point seems contradictory with the convergence that we noted above. This contradiction is and remains real, but it is solved by a strategy group: the debate. - The notion of debate is opposed to the concept of "rules of art" defined by Bourdieu himself, because it does not include fixed and immutable principles, but, on the contrary, feeds on differences and oppositions within the field. This is how the permanent tension created by these oppositions and divergences makes art evolve and become enriched. This debate is performed through artwork, texts and exhibitions, much more than through direct confrontations. This debate has two levels: a global and an internal one. The global debate attempts to define the place and function of art in society, while the internal debate seeks to determine who has the right to participate in the previous debate and in what capacity. Thus, the internal debate has reason to exist only within the global debate. Nevertheless, many "people of art" take into account only this internal form of debate and the objective of many individual strategies focuses on it. Debate (at both a global and an internal level) seems to be a feature of the dominant group in the field of art. This, for two complementary reasons: On the one hand, it is this group that controls the means of debate and, on the other hand, the other groups working in the art often consider this debate as having only peripheral importance. - The existence of the artistic scenes, highlighted by our study, emphasizes the fact that artists are not a socio-professional category but that each social group produces its own artists and its own artistic forms. The real difficulties that most artists who have to live off of their creations face do not entail that all of them live in a precarious economic situation, but drives each one of them to find means of subsistence outside these artistic activities. These means are provided by the artist's social milieu or a remunerative activity, thus reinforcing the links created between the artist and these environments, although more so than between artists. Moreover, it is in these environments that the artist can hope to find an audience and potential customers for his works. - Finally, our study tends to prove that art does not have its own territory, but that it constitutes a way of participating in a pre-existing territory. This is at least the case of neighbourhoods of people of art, such as the Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris, the Macarena in Bogota or the historical case of Montmartre.